Abstract

IntroductionPain‐related thought suppression (TS) is, besides other strategies of attention diversion, one of the most common cognitive responses to pain (Hasenbring, ; Goldin et al., ; Hasenbring et al., ). In general, TS has been defined as the intentional attempt ‘to not think about’ a given stimulus (Wegner, ; Najmi and Wegner, ). Compared with pain monitoring strategies, experimental induction of TS as a response to cold pressor pain in healthy people has been shown to paradoxically cause higher pain ratings during (Sullivan et al., ) and after pain stimulation (Cioffi and Holloway, ), as well as higher levels of distress (Masedo and Esteve, ). Clinical studies revealed positive associations between habitual pain‐related TS and several outcomes, such as pain, disability and depression in patients with low back pain (LBP) in primary care (Klasen et al., ; Hasenbring et al., ; Hülsebusch et al., ; Konietzny et al., ) or before and after lumbar disc surgery (Hasenbring, ; Grebner et al., ). Hence, there is a need to understand the mechanisms responsible for the paradoxical effects of this type of pain response.Wegner's ‘ironic process model of thought suppression’ has systematized the following processes involved in TS (Wegner et al., ; Wenzlaff and Wegner, ): one conscious operating process

Journal

European Journal of Pain
– Wiley

Published: Jan 1, 2018

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References

Chronic back pain is associated with decreased prefrontal and thalamic gray matter density